Maurice Clemens died at age 60 in 1982 at Leila Hospital after what his obituary described as a long illness.

And even in 1982, dying at age 60 was just too damn young. Especially after what he’d been through to get there.

Nancy Moorehead didn’t know that. She’d lost touch with her cousin after he came back from World War II. Divorce had split the families, as such things tend to do, and she went off to a life of her own, as did Mike.

Mike was the son of George and Carmen Clemens who lived at 91 Cherry St. back then. Carmen was the sister of Nancy’s dad, Garnet Burt.

She always wondered what happened to him, hearing at one time he was in Colorado. But he was in Battle Creek and, apparently, always had been.

Before the war, Mike had driven for his dad’s delivery company. When he returned, different but the same, he drove some more, this time for a Battle Creek brewing company.

He was a member of the VFW Post 565 and the George Custer American Legion Post 54 and the Daughters of the American Revolution Chapter 7 and the Polish National Alliance. Anything, it seemed, Mike could join that involved honoring veterans, he joined.

Because he knew in ways that soldiers who leave pieces of themselves on a battlefield far away can only understand in a special way.

And Mike left a little of himself in a lot of places.

Nancy Moorehead, now 79, had no idea that her cousin Mike had been wounded five times in Europe during the war. She only learned that this week when she saw a story in the Battle Creek Enquirer recounting the exploits of local soldiers as part of a remembrance of the 70th anniversary of the end of the war.

In that installment, the old News and Enquirer reported in May 1945 that Clemens was wounded in Italy, spending two months in a hospital. He then returned to action and was hit twice in Anzio, as was Moorehead’s stepfather, George Hornbeck.

“I still have his Purple Heart,” she said.

He was wounded a fourth time in October 1944 and, while recovering in a hospital in Italy, received a battle commission to lieutenant.

His fifth, and most serious wound, was sustained in December 1944 in Kaiserburg, Germany, when he was wounded by shrapnel in his hip. He was eventually sent back to Iowa to recover in a military hospital.

Nancy Moorehead knew none of this and wishes she had. It would have been nice, she said, to have reconnected with him, found out about his experience in Europe (not that he likely would have said much) and, perhaps, recounted the old days when life was just a little simpler.

“I remember we had a going-away party for him and my uncle George Burt before they left,” she said. “Mike was there with his girlfriend (who would become his wife), Geri, and he was in uniform. He was so young and handsome.”

Somehow Mike, who saw action in Africa, Sicily, Italy, France and Germany, made it home alive.

He started a family with Geri and had two kids, Daniel and Mina, and he went back to the job of trying to live a normal life after a decidedly abnormal experience. He’s buried at Reese Cemetery in Springfield.

As for Nancy Moorehead, she’s lived in Battle Creek her entire life. She was married, divorced and then was remarried, this time to Jim Moorehead with whom she has lived for 53 years.

“I’ve been blessed,” she said.

And now she knows what happened to the handsome young man in the Army uniform that she figured had slipped away in time and memory.

He made it home. And that’s enough.

Chuck Carlson can be reached at 966-0690 or ccarlson@battlecreekenquirer.com. Follow him on Twitter: @ChuckCarlson4